


The Dangerous Life of Sherlock Holmes

by alexcat



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Community: holmestice, M/M, disgruntled watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 15:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16663357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Holmes decides that his life is not quite exciting enough.





	The Dangerous Life of Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taz/gifts).



> For the Holmestice Exchange

The Dangerous Life of Sherlock Holmes

I knew we were in for trouble when he said this one morning over breakfast: “I have too many friends. What I need is an enemy to play with.” 

A shiver ran up my spine. 

The only friend he had on the entirety of planet Earth was me. John Watson. A man who, against all the good sense I supposedly have, loves Sherlock Holmes. 

And he wanted an enemy. 

From his lips to God’s ear, I guess. 

We had just finished up with the Blackwood affair. I’d thought having Blackwood trying to kill us all was enemy enough for one week. I was apparently wrong. 

“You know there is someone else out there, don’t you?” he asked me. 

He was referring to the man Irene Adler had told him about, the man who he believed was after a part of the apparatus that Blackwood used in the House of Parliament and who got it, causing Blackwood’s machine to malfunction. The man who had hired Irene in the first place. 

Moriarty. 

“You could just leave this alone, you know. Irene might be beautiful and the only woman I’ve ever seen you smitten with, but you know you can’t trust her. She is a conniving vixen.”

“She is me, Watson. I admit my bosom is not as pretty as hers, but she is me. That’s why I like her. We understand one another.” 

I shook my head. Only my Sherlock would become enamored of a female copy of himself! 

“Why do you need enemies? You have me and Mrs. Hudson as friends.”

He harrumphed at the mention of Mrs. Hudson. “She keeps trying to poison me. She’s more of a threat than Moriarty is.”

“Mrs. Hudson is _not_ trying to poison you! I’ve told you that over and over.” 

“Then why was I so sick the other day?” 

“You mean when you drank embalming fluid again?” 

He smiled and shrugged. “Well there is that. But I’m fairly sure she put some toxin inthe tea. It tasted funny.” 

“You poured sour milk in it. And you have me. Do I not disagree with you often enough? Should we box a bit? Shall I yell at you more often?”

He looked at me as if he were thinking about it. “No. I prefer the, uh, physical activities that we do engage in. Besides, you have a limp. I can’t punch a cripple out.” 

“But you can do the other things you do to me?” He was making me want to slap his beautiful face. 

“Well, you’re not usually standing when I do those.” 

I felt myself blush. Me, John Watson, war veteran, surgeon, part-time consulting detective to the London police. And I was blushing at my best friend’s words. 

Perhaps I should clarify that, but if I do, no one else can know. Sherlock _is_ my best friend, but of late, we have become more than that. This cannot be known abroad or we would both face the goal. 

And disgrace. 

He’s crazy enough as it is and I don’t fancy being in or out of prison without him. 

“I don’t think Irene was fooled,” he said.

She wouldn’t be. 

“Irene is seldom fooled by anything. She’s almost as clever as you are.” 

“Are you trying to flatter me, Watson? It won’t get you any extra favors.” 

“No. I’m not. I like the favors I get fine. I am trying to protect you. Irene is playing with danger, more danger than either of you seem to understand.” This whole line of thought was becoming alarming. 

“I am dangerous when I get bored.”

I sighed. He was right there. He was dangerous anytime but more so when he wasn’t properly challenged. I feared that London was running out of proper challenges. 

I was wrong. 

“You might be right, but I must see this through. I have looked into this Moriarty and I believe him to be a criminal mastermind. I know not what he’ll do next, but I must take this case. Moriarty must be stopped.” 

“Or what, Holmes? What will he do that you should risk your and especially _my_ life to stop?”

“I am not yet sure, but he may make Blackwood look like a rank amateur.” This did not distress him. He actually smiled at his words. 

That chill returned to my spine. 

Unfortunately, Moriarty made a move, one calculated to rid him of someone who had become a liability and to bait Holmes in a way that little else could. 

He poisoned Irene Adler. 

“What will you do?” I asked him. 

“I shall stop him, no matter what. He thinks I have not connected his various crimes because they seem random, but I have. I take the long view and see that he is doing things to make himself richer and more powerful. He will not settle for being the head of London crime. He means to spread his crime empire over the world, as if he were a conquering Napoleon.”

I wanted to laugh at his analogy, but feared he was too close to the truth. A Napoleon of crime? Perhaps. And perhaps more than one man, even one as brilliant as Holmes, could take down. 

“I cannot stop you from this course?” I asked one last time.

“Can I stop you from foolishly marrying Mary?” 

“You know it’s for the best. We both want a family, and I need a life apart from the one I have with you. Mary knows about you and me. She is willing to live this way. We both want a family and a chance at a more normal life. You know that I will not leave you.” 

“I am not happy that you will be between her thighs more than you are mine,” he said. 

“Holmes, I say nothing of your dalliances.” 

He became angry. “That woman is not a dalliance. I believe you care for her.”

“I do, but I love you. Surely you know that by now.”

He got that look, the wild one where I could not predict what he’d say or do. “I want you to myself!” 

We did not speak for several weeks. I was angry and rightly so, but I also knew that he’d win in the end. He always does, and sometimes he gloats. 

You all have read the accounts I have given you in the magazines of what happened next. He and Moriarty went at it until they both destroyed one another. 

Or so we thought. 

My lover, my best friend, the man I devoted myself to did not contact me for three long years. _Three years!_ I believed him dead, as did his brother and the rest of the world. Mary had died giving birth to our daughter and I was trying to raise her with the help of Mrs. Hudson. We lived in the old apartment at 221B Baker Street. 

Life went on. It does that, whether we like it or not. 

One evening, little Emily was with Mrs. Hudson and I was reading a medical text. I still practiced medicine and had quite a large practice, something I attribute to the bad fortune of losing both my wife and my lover and needing something to keep me from losing my sanity along with them. 

I turned from the bookshelf and there he stood. Sherlock Holmes in the flesh! The next thing I remember is seeing him above me, holding a glass, urging me to take a sip of what tasted like brandy. 

When I had properly come around, I was furious. 

“What, in the name of God, were you thinking?” 

He leaned down and kissed me. “I was thinking that I needed to be dead to stay alive! Moriarty’s man, Moran, would have come for me. I played dead.”

I sat up and shoved him away. “Do you have any idea what you put me through?”

“I did it to protect you.”

I was angrier than I ever remember being. I wanted to kill him for not being dead, and I wanted to drag him to the bedroom and show him I was glad he was alive - both at the same time. 

“You were gone for three years!” 

“I am home.”

“This is my home now. My daughter lives here, too.”

“She is quite lovely, looks a little like you and a lot like her mother.” 

I found myself shouting. “You’ve seen her?” 

“Of course I have. I’ve been watching you for a while.”

“How long?” 

“A year or so.”

I exploded again! A year. He had let me think he was dead for three years and he’d been close enough to watch me for a year? 

“You are – I have no words for what you are, Holmes!” I was sputtering, utterly at a loss for words. 

He grabbed me and hugged me tight. “There, there, Watson,” he said oddly as he patted my back awkwardly. “Everything will be fine now. I’m home.”

I wanted to strangle him. Everything would be all right? How long before he needed an enemy again? Who would I lose this time? Him? 

I meant to get up and tell him to leave and never come back. Mrs. Hudson, Emily and lazy old Gladstone made a nice little family for me. We were happy and safe here. I meant to banish him from our lives. 

I really meant to. 

I looked into those dark eyes and I was lost, completely and utterly lost. 

“Yes, Sherlock, you are home.”


End file.
